


De Profundis

by thecoldlightofday



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-31
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-27 17:52:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecoldlightofday/pseuds/thecoldlightofday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rick and Shane meet for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	De Profundis

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [ on my tumblr.](http://cuntsthatwere.tumblr.com/post/35962402350/de-profundis)

_And he will redeem Israel from all his inquities._

The air still smelled like summer. There was a breeze blowing and it was a warm early autumn. Shane pedaled faster, breathing in deep, and out of the corners of his eyes he watched the passing greenery of the trees. Ahead of him, Caleb and Robbie crashed through the bushes, their bikes creating a narrow trail of crushed grass and snapped twigs for him to follow. They were yelling at him to get his shit together and he hollered back, grinning while he thought about what he was going to do to them, confident with the weight of his water gun strapped to his back. As soon as they got to the creek, Robbie and Caleb weren’t going to know what hit them.

Shane burst from beneath the canopy of foliage, sunlight glaring brightly at him from the smooth asphalt of the streets. The creek was only a quick ride through this neighborhood, which was different from the one Shane and Robbie and Caleb lived in. Every house had perfect, matching shutters, every car was parked in the driveway, and there were no handprints with names underneath written into the sidewalks.

“Wait up!” he called out, standing to accelerate better, sun burning hot across his face. Robbie and Caleb were up the block from him; paused for the moment, one foot on the ground each while they stared up at a tree. “Hey, what’re you doing?” he asked them, panting while he tried to catch his breath. He squinted up where they were looking. There was nothing there except a Scrub-Jay sitting in its nest. He took a moment to look it over—blue back and tail, beady eyes, gray throat and round, soft little belly. It was nothing they hadn’t seen a hundred times before.

“Check this out,” Caleb said, smirking. He took his water gun and pumped it before he aimed it up at the tree. A gush of water arched toward the Scrub-Jay but there wasn’t enough pressure behind it, and it splashed instead against the trunk of the tree. Irritated, the Scrub-Jay stood up, flashing wide wings and long tail feathers, and started to screech.

“Bet you I can hit it,” Shane said. He was a better shot than Caleb. He spent hours in his backyard, filling his water gun up with the hose over and over, nailing cans he’d set up all along the fence.

He took aim, fired, and a weak spattering of water wet the Jay from belly to wings.

The Jay squawked, wings fluttering, and launched itself into the sky.

“I got it!” Robbie cackled, riding after it, and Shane and Caleb both followed, bikes wobbling because they were trying to steer with just one hand.

Robbie was the worst shot out of the three of them; he usually started crying halfway through a water fight, already soaked, wailing while he tried to keep the spray from getting in his the eyes, saying it wasn’t fair how Caleb and Shane ganged up on him. But today he managed to hit the Jay dead on, in the face instead of the side or the stomach, and the Jay twitched midair before plummeting to earth. It landed, dazed, on the pavement.

Shane couldn’t stop himself in time. He tried, but the breaks on his bike were shitty, and he had too much momentum to pedal backward, and his bike jolted like he’d hit a bump. The Jay crunched sickly beneath him, Shane’s bike bending feathers and breaking bones. He skidded to a stop and his wheels left a faint line of blood behind them.

He was afraid to look.

Caleb prodded with a stick at the innards. The smell hit Shane sharply, strong and meaty, blood and shit. His tires had bisected the mother bird in half.

“Gross,” Robbie snickered. “Look at all the blood.”

Caleb got bored poking the body. He went over to the tree, pulled himself up into the branches, and climbed down out of the tree holding in his hands the Jay’s nest. Inside were three tiny, chirping baby birds. They were naked and featherless, scraggly looking and pink. They opened and closed their beaks.

“It had babies,” Caleb said.

Shane felt worse. He hadn’t meant to kill the Jay, even if it was kind of cool to look at after, insides spread all over, and now he’d killed the babies too.

“If you touch them the mother won’t take them back,” Robbie said distantly.

“The mother’s dead,” Shane whispered. He’d done that. Not on purpose, but still.

“Well then so are they.” Caleb set the nest down. He picked up one of the baby birds. It fidgeted in his open palm, squabbling until Caleb set it down on a crack in the sidewalk. “You think it’ll squish like the mom?”

Shane found himself wondering. The baby was smaller than the tire. One smooth run over it and there’d be nothing left. It would probably be those opossums flattened in the center of the road. He didn’t want to find out, though.

“We can each do one?” Robbie suggested, lining up the other two babies in a row.

Caleb shook his head. “Shane already got to do the big one. We’ll rock, paper, scissors for the third.”

While Robbie and Caleb played, another kid came riding up from across the street.

“What’re you doing?” He asked, eyes wide like he knew already. His gaze flickered from the dead Jay to the babies.

Shane and his friends just looked at the kid. He had a nicer bike than any of them. It was new, painted red all over, and there was a baseball card stuck into the spokes. It had big, textured grip handlebars and its chain sparkled like polished chrome. It wasn’t like Robbie’s bike that had gotten passed down from an older brother, or Caleb’s that he’d bought at a yard sale, or a four year old Christmas present like Shane’s that he was starting to outgrow.

“Nothing,” Caleb said even though it couldn’t be nothing, not with his bike poised to run over the baby birds.

Shane knew they were in trouble. This kid was going to go and tell his parents and then they’d call Shane’s mom and she’d take away his bike for a week. It was time to tuck tail and leave.

“I’m not gonna let you do it,” the boy said, walking his bike until it was between Caleb and Robbie and the birds.

They all just kind of glared at each other for a few minutes, long enough Shane thought they were going to start fighting, but in the end Caleb shook his head and started to pedal away. He circled through the Jay Shane had already run over, leaving the tread marks of his tires pressed bloody into the street. Robbie pedaled after him.

Shane didn’t move. This kid had guts standing up to the three of them that way.

“I didn’t mean to kill it,” Shane said softly, watching the boy pick up each half of the dead Jay with a stick. He moved the parts gently over to the grass and set them down beneath the old oak.

The kid looked at Shane for a moment, hard. His blue eyes narrowed. It felt like he could see Shane straight through. “I know,” he said, finally. And the way he said it, Shane knew he meant it too.

Shane’s throat was tight and he swallowed. Tears prickled hot in the corners of his eyes. He wiped his face with the hem of his dirty t-shirt. It was stupid of him to cry.

“I’m Shane,” he said, crouching down beside the boy now, the two of them watching the little birds wriggle as they were put back in their nest.

“Rick,” the boy answered.

“They’re gonna die,” Shane said. He reached down and touched one of the babies on the head. It tried to take his finger into its mouth.

Rick shook his head. “No. Their dad will feed them. Birds have two parents like us.”

“They’re just gonna die,” Shane repeated.

“They’ll be okay,” and there it was again, something in the way Rick said it that made Shane believed that the birds really were going to be alright. That their dad would take care of them, feed them, wash their little wings. Dads came back, sometimes. “Gimme a boost.”

Shane cupped his hands together and gave Rick a place to stand on so he could put the nest back in the branches of the tree. He wedged it between two thin branches, shading the nest in a cluster of leaves. Rick dusted his hands on his jeans. He smiled widely as he hopped down.

Shane grinned back, he couldn’t help it.

“Wanna ride to my house?” Rick asked. “My mom’s making sandwiches.”

“Yeah,” Shane said, not thinking about Robbie or Caleb or the frogs and tadpoles splashing in the creek. Sandwiches sounded better. “Let’s go.”

The next afternoon, on his way to Rick’s, he found the baby birds on the sidewalk—dried out and dead from sitting in the sun. They’d tumbled out of their nest in the night. Shane stared at them for a moment: the withered bodies and comically oversized heads.

He pushed the birds into the storm drain with his sneaker so Rick wouldn’t see them, then went on his way.


End file.
